Butterfly
by Chainlinks
Summary: When metaphors are reality, conformity is the only option. Slash, RogerJack, AU.


Warnings: Roger/Jack among other slash pairings. If you don't enjoy reading slash, I'd recommend you find a different fic. Kay? Okay.  
  
Summary: When metaphors are a reality, conformity is the only option.  
  
Disclaimer: As you probably already know, I don't own anything here.  
  
POV: Roger  
  
Butterfly  
  
Darkness and blood and pain and savage cries and Jack's there in the center of it all, laughing. His red hair, once such a perfect cut to match his perfect voice and perfect rank, is long and shades the malice in his eyes. Can he sing anymore? Probably not. He can chant, though, a crying, deadly chant that rips through our pierced souls.  
  
And now I'm in the center of it too, dancing because we never learned how but I can feel how. Jack's eyes are set unwaveringly on my twisting form and I know they are because I can feel his gaze and it's blistering my flesh, trying to see through to another layer of me.  
  
My heart is pounding to the beat of Jack's chant. He comes closer to me, a smile on his lips. The smile isn't friendly because I remember his friendly smile, that curve of his lips that was so often directed to me, his best friend. I'm not his best friend anymore. I'm his right hand, which is so much closer than friends can be.  
  
His smile is feral. When his tongue darts out to lick his smile, everyone sees it for the predatory movement that it is. Some of the littluns shriek. They aren't really little now; most of them are as old as we were when we first came here. They still act young, though, because they never learned different.  
  
Jack puts his hands out to stop my dance. His arms are pinning me, then pushes me in a rough, violent action that leaves me kneeling on bloody knees at his feet. There are strange looks around us, so I transform everything into an old game; an old game that has to end right now.  
  
I let my hands join my knees on the ground and make a few grunting boar noises. They all laugh, mostly Jack. I give the redhead my very best grin and launch myself at his legs. He sidesteps me easily, slapping my head playfully as I lunge past. If I was a real boar, he might have gotten away with that. I twist my body in a turn no boar could make. It's almost breaking the rules, but there are no rules so it doesn't matter.  
  
He stumbles, then trips to the ground in an unprecedented fall. The glare he gives me is deadly, but I just grin again and lead him farther into this terrifying game. He stopped chanting when he hit the ground, and the only noise now is the thunder-like cracking of the logs breaking as they are consumed by fire and the shakey staggered breathing of a dozen lost boys.  
  
He shoves me and I shove him back and then we're skin on skin, wrestling on the rock-strewn ground. Lips brush skin, mine or his I don't know, but it might have been accidental anyway. His ear is close to my mouth now, and I whisper so only he can hear: "Do you ever feel guilty about the deaths? Yes? Is it guilty pleasure?"  
  
He retreats slightly looking shocked. The others around us close in; Jack and I are the slender swan neck and they are a noose, tightening quickly, strangling us in the bliss of suffocation. Jack can't breathe. He gasps for air and he can't breathe but he doesn't know why. His hair is tossed back from his face and there lies his fatal mistake, because the eyes are the window to the soul.  
  
I can see his eyes. I can see through his eyes to that broken, tattered, tear-stained rag he called a soul. He thought he'd hidden it in the paint, but I can still see it clearly.  
  
I take the soul and he's mine.  
  
I kiss him hard and slow.  
  
No matter how much he wants to hide right then, I can see him, everything in him because his soul is caught in my hand and I'm stringing it up in a secret hiding place where I can see it and he can't get it.  
  
There's no more kiss. There's no more noise. Even the first seems silent, but it's not. Then Bill speaks up to crisply point out the obvious. "You're both boys."  
  
Maurice echoes the sentiment, "Boys kiss girls, not other boys. It's not right."  
  
There, it's been said. The others wait, staring at us. This is a turning point in the culture we created. They will gauge our reaction to this and either brutally murder us in a savage unity of British ideals and barbaric violence or they will accept and copy us, finding a new outlet for their desperation.  
  
Either way is fine with me; Jack knows that, I'm sure. He would make them murder us if he thought I'd scream, but instead he just smiles at Bill. It's almost a friendly smile, but there's an air of sarcastic contempt.  
  
"What's wrong?" Jack asks snidely. "This isn't Britain. You had your choice to go back to Britain and all the British stupid thinking with Ralph. You chose to stay here and forget all of civilation's boring ideals."  
  
A lot of the littluns don't remember, but all the bigguns do. That hot day, the thrill of the chase, then the abrupt stop and the intrusion of adult powers. We had all been British boys again for a moment, just one brief moment. Even me, even Jack. The moment ended, and we pretended like it hadn't. Jack offered a smile as a peace offering for Ralph, and volunteered to gather the rest of the children.  
  
He had disappeared into the jungle, followed by everyone else within moments. There had been the screaming echo of a conch that no longer esisted exept for a few shattered remains trapped with the body of the boy I had once killed.  
  
We had a meeting, then, everyone on equal grounds. It didn't matter that we'd been trying to kill Ralph minutes before, nothing matter. We'd restarted the game. Somehow, though, we couldn't erase the memories. Jack wore his paint to the meeting because he wasn't the leader of the choir boys anymore. Ralph clutched a pink-white stone that he'd found moments before, clutched it like it was that dead shell.  
  
Jack announced that he was a hunter, a savage, a chief and would never be different.  
  
Ralph told us it had been fun and horrifying, but he was leaving now, so goodbye.  
  
Everyone rechose their sides.  
  
Some, like Samneric followed Ralph away back to reality and civilization.  
  
Most stayed behind.  
  
For me, it was no hard choice. Go back to that boring world where I was bound by meaningless rules and society's too-strict beliefs? Never. Not while Jack was here, Jack and all his untamed passion.  
  
I watched from the thick leaves when Ralph returned, leading less than a dozen boys to the navy men. He told them calmly that he'd found everyone, could they leave now? He deftly avoided questions about the sudden lack of numbers and the vanishing of that redhead who had very nearly protested Ralph's leadership.  
  
And now this.  
  
Maurice and Bill stared at us.  
  
Jack stared at me.  
  
Eyes and blinking, mouths gaping.  
  
Jack stared at me.  
  
Bill and Maurices' gazes sung to each other.  
  
Jack stared at me.  
  
Skin touched skin, and as if there had been an electric shock, they jerked away. This was a new touch; a boy's real not quite romantic touch. Ideals were not sacred, especially ones from a civilized world, and under the watch of hunters prepared to kill, Bill and Maurice had to prove they were willing to conform, willing to touch.  
  
Jack's gaze fell from me, pouncing suddenly onto the two boys' hesitating forms. He stood up, shoving me away. "Are your minds still stuck in Britain?" he demanded. "Do you want your bodies to be in Britain?"  
  
These questions had been asked before. A littlun had been getting taller. He had lost interest in the sandforts and his eyes sparked with the determination of a bigun. Jack decided that he was ready to be a bigun. Jack created an elaborate initiation, something awful and brutal and incredibly delicious. The boy refused the initiation, saying it was horrible; no one should have to go through that.  
  
And Jack asked The Two Questions.  
  
The boy displayed a rare sentimental moment, commenting wistfully that, yes, his mind was still in Britain and yes, he did want his body to join it. He missed his home; he wanted to go home.  
  
Jack tied him roughly to a poorly crafted raft, declined the boy's plea for a few bananas, then pushed him off the shore.  
  
He came back a few weeks later, more than a little dead. Rotting, actually.  
  
I'd laughed, because otherwise Jack would have gotten that uneasy guilt and guard himself too closely for me to touch. So I'd laughed, he'd laughed, we all had laughed and said that the boy had deserved exactly what he'd gotten.  
  
And now Bill and Maurice were faced with this option: Conform or Die.  
  
They kiss. I laugh, then Jack laughs, then everyone laughs. Yes, wasn't this great? everyone asked as they shared first kisses and second and third. We are all boys, but no one even remembers the soft curves of a girl's body, but they can't get rid of that hidden desire inside and boys are the next best thing.  
  
Jack kisses me, but it is only so he can whisper to me. "You never even feel guilty for this corruption, do you? You're corrupting this society to your own twisted version. The only reason I'm not stopping you is because it happens to be working to be working to my advantage."  
  
I put on my very best innocent smile. "I'm your second-in-command, Chief. You know that."  
  
"Right," his voice drips with something thicker, deeper than a choir boy's sarcasm. "Their -- my -- our.... Our pleasure translates into pure pleasure that runs through your veins."  
  
How did he know?  
  
He pushes my hair up before I can stop him and smirks, staring cooly into my eyes.  
  
Jack is a very good leader and when he sees someone strong enough to be a future threat, he lures them into a false sense of security. He makes them think they can take his soul while the entire time he's delicately stealing their own soul.  
  
I thought I'd made him mine. He'd made me his, totally and completely. He's so beautiful now, the darkness that he hid from me is so clear and shining now. I stare into the shade that covers Jack eyes, the shade that was there and I never saw, and I let him know that I really am being submissive.  
  
He smiles.  
  
The otheres sense my reaffirmation of Jack's dominance and break into a choir of "Hail Chief!"s.  
  
Jack pulls me into another kiss, wrapping me up nicely in all the darkness of his soul, shaping me a perfect cucoon.  
  
"Emerge a pretty butterfly for me," Jack murmurs.  
  
"You tear the wings off butterflies," I retort.  
  
"I know," he answers sweetly.  
  
I emerge his pretty butterfly and he promptly pulls off my rainbow black wings in one fierce, soul-shattering kiss that explodes my world. 


End file.
